1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to data processing and, in particular, to interactive voice services. Still more particularly, the present invention provides a method, apparatus, and computer program product for providing composite voice applications and services using single sign-on across heterogeneous voice servers.
2. Description of Related Art
Interactive voice servers (IVS) are services that can be accessed from all phone devices by a public switched telephone network (PSTN) or voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) Internet (wired or wireless). In general, these servers interact with users only by voice and dual tone multi frequency (DTMF) signals, also known as touchtone signals, or equivalent. This is especially important for mobile users that can access the services by cell phones to perform critical business functions while away from the office, for example.
It is generally required for users to type in a user identification (ID) and/or a passcode by pushing the phone's keypad to log in an IVS after dialing in to the service. The passcode may be transported to the IVS via DTMF industrial standard. Consequently, every time a user dials into a different voice server, the user must go through the DTMF login process again. Currently, an IVS only provides services accessible from its own server, and cannot provide access to the services provided by another IVS.
As a result, each user must remember a user ID and passcode for each service. Furthermore, the user must dial into each service separately and perform a DTMF sequence to log into each service. This results in an inconvenience for users who wish to access several services, especially when the user accesses these services within a short period of time. There is added frustration when the services are somewhat related to one another and the user must remember information gained from one service to perform a task with another service.